by Peter Craig
She suddenly felt very lonely and afraid, and she realized that she had been fading in and out of a delirious partial sleep for the past several hours. The dark window disoriented her. Her father was sprawled on the bed under a stripe of headlights moving counterclockwise around the walls.
As she rose from the bed and moved into the narrow bathroom, she could think of nothing else but to make up her face, as if for a party. She traced her eyes with a pencil, and blended two shades of lipstick, and tried to get her hair to do something, anything, in the stale, dry air. When she was assembled—not right, not perfect, but at that exasperated point in which she needed to leave the mirror to avoid wallowing in flaws—she left the room, walked past the pool, and waited in the lobby.
There was no one there except the clerk. She couldn’t see him, but heard typing in a bright room behind the desk. She sat on the couch and found the TV remote. For a long time she surfed through channels and ate butterscotch candies from a dish.
She was hardly paying attention to the news when her own picture came up onto the screen.
The police were searching for information about a missing girl wanted for her possible connection to multiple homicides; a warrant had been issued for her as a material witness. Lydia leaned forward, transfixed. It was her eighth-grade school picture, when her hair was lighter and only shoulder-length, and her cheeks were rounder, and she’d had a zit on her chin that her mother had asked to have airbrushed. There she was on TV, a virginal Lydia, with a smile that looked like a polite response to a corny joke. The story went on for a good two or three minutes longer, about how she was traveling with her father, a convicted felon. They showed mug shots of him in front of a lined background, his long hair drooping, the crown of his stooped head reaching between the 75” and 76” markers, his beard darker, his nose swollen and cut at the bridge from a recent fight or accident.
The news moved on to another story about an E. coli outbreak at a fast-food chain, but Lydia stopped watching and covered her face. She started to laugh into her cupped hands, her body growing tense and expectant, as if she were in a plane just before its wheels left the ground, and when she could no longer contain herself she leapt up and started shouting, “Oh my God! I’m a fucking celebrity!”
The clerk came out of the filing room, frowning.
She said, “Shit, shit, change the channel. Find the other channel.”
She grabbed the remote and flipped to a neighboring local channel, then squealed and broke into laughter. “That is so crazy!”
The clerk twisted his head and marveled at the image on the screen, shifting his eyes back and forth to Lydia. She moved back to the check-in counter across from him, catching her breath. Abruptly, she became still. “God, that’s a terrible picture, though. Do I look like that?”
“Must have been taken a while ago,” said the clerk. He was a tall, extremely pale man with reddish hair and a long, sharp nose. He seemed groggy, as if he had fallen asleep in the back room.
“Try three years ago,” said Lydia.
“You look good.” He glanced at her, then back at the screen. “Hard to say if you look better or worse.” The same picture of her father came up, and the clerk asked, “Who’s that?”
“My dad.”
“Did he kidnap you or something?”
“I guess.”
“You don’t look like him at all.”
She looked at the clerk and stretched her palm across her face. “I do across the cheekbones,” she said. “You can’t tell because he’s a fucking wookie.”
The clerk took the remote off the counter and flipped around other news channels, shaking his head. “Looks like it’s just local.”
“You don’t know that. Try Headline News.”
He found a story about a blizzard gripping Denver.
“Snow,” said Lydia. “How is that news? Cold shit fell from the sky today. Amazing.”
The clerk had a determined look on his face as he kept searching through channels, into the higher numbers where pitchwomen grinned on shopping channels, preachers wagged their fingers, and country-western singers danced in the backs of trucks and horse trailers.
“It’ll be national,” said Lydia. “Trust me. It’ll be all over the news.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Because I got star power. Baby. I’ll be on Nightline.”
“No way.”
“Or, like, when it’s all over—I’ll go cry to Montel Williams. He’ll hug me and get all fucking misty, and, oh shit, I’ll be a national treasure, dog. Like that chick they pulled out of a well.”
“You’re crazy,” he said.
She was laughing, thrilled with the fantasy, until a car passed on the highway outside and the room suddenly seemed bright and visible to everyone, like a glass display case. “Yeah, maybe not.”
“You should come in here for a second,” he said. “Come back here with me. I want to show you something.”
Lydia searched his face. He was turning pink, smoldering, but she saw in his rumpled clothes and sleepy face that he was curious, stoned, hated his job, and probably related more easily with those in trouble than those in charge. He led her into a cramped filing room and closed the door behind them. “I’m going to get in so much trouble for this,” he said. “But I just got to show you.” From beside the fax machine, he picked up two curling pieces of paper and handed them to her.
Her picture and her father’s, the same ones from the news—they had probably been sent to every motel, gas station, and diner along the highway. The information below was far more extensive than on the news. It warned local proprietors not to confront them; they were to call authorities immediately.
The clerk said, “You don’t look like any kind of murderer.”
The word hit Lydia suddenly, hard and cold. She stared at the clerk for a moment, and finally replied stiffly, “Thank you. Neither do you.”
twelve
At a little before midnight, Link woke to the sound of a car engine idling at a gas station across the street. It was only a late-night traveler, but the booming radio had merged with the last residue of his nightmares, seeming like rhythmic kicks and battering rams on the motel door. In the dream, he had been cutting his daughter’s braided hair with a kitchen knife, claiming that he needed a souvenir. Now, he was completely awake and confused by the mix of sympathy and anger he had felt while sawing through the hair. He needed to lay still for a moment and reaffirm his simple goals: Keep Lydia safe, keep her clean. His plans need not be complicated. The girl would learn some balance. He assumed this was the way that a father taught a child, by running alongside her, as if holding a bicycle, until she found her own center of gravity. But if his daughter didn’t trust him, she would pull away too soon, and drive herself straight into the ground.
Awake but drowsing, Link wished he had some perfect crystallized advice for Lydia—like the words of a magic spell—that would soothe her and set her off on a better route; but he worried that anything he told her would sound hollow coming from a man like him. After all, he represented everything in the world that he wanted her to avoid, and he worried that he might only be a good father by convincing her to reject him. Kirby had said on the phone that he should help her find the Lord, but to Link, God only presided as an even higher authority figure with a grudge against him. Link tried. Yet, as a Christian, he was like someone hedging his bet; and if he couldn’t fool God, he probably couldn’t fool a teenage girl either. She knew him already. She saw that he was shipwrecked. She was already beginning to despise it like some disease in her own bloodlines. And he didn’t think he could live without at least the fantasy of her affection. It seemed a punishment worse than going down for the rest of his life.
And then it occurred to Link that maybe a man could do everything wrong and still, somehow, be a good father in the end. All he needed was to give her faith in a direction. There were so many different ways to go in the world, a kid like Lydia might just spin in cir
cles for the rest of her life. Maybe a good parent just centered the kid and shoved her forward, as in some game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, set her off blindfolded toward a spot across the room, and prayed that she didn’t bump into a lamp. Maybe it didn’t take wisdom or goodness, but just a little nerve. A scared parent would cling to the kid and never make the final push; an indifferent one would let them wander seasick around the room; and one like Link’s father would probably just spin the kid around until he dropped. The idea inspired him. It meant that a good father needed only to perceive something beyond himself, out in the distance, past the horizon. And through all the paralytic remorse of his own life, on its decline toward a heaven he’d scrapped together out of clichés and apologies, maybe he could just push his crazy daughter toward the light, and watch her carry on, outlive and outlast him.
He was starting to doze back to sleep when he realized that Lydia wasn’t in the room. This sudden jolt came at nearly the same instant that the phone began to ring, an old-fashioned bell, which he couldn’t locate in the dark. When he finally pawed the receiver, he accidentally answered, “Missing Link Tattoos.”
“You have to come downstairs,” said Lydia. “It’s the craziest thing ever.”
“What is?”
“I’m down in the lobby. We have a serious problem, but it’s hilarious. You have to come down here. I left a bunch of stuff in the bathroom—so don’t leave that. It probably has DNA on it.”
“DNA?”
“Just grab as much as you can and come down to the lobby. Oh, and don’t turn on the lights. There’s a good chance we’re being watched. Come the back way, by the pool, so no one sees you. And Dad? Check the lobby. Make sure it’s clear. I’m so on top of this. You are going to be so fucking impressed with me.”
He peeked through the blinds at the parking lot, and—rather than police—Link saw a white Ford Taurus sitting at the gas station next door, headlights on, radio turned down. This was a coincidence, certainly—every rental car in America looked like this; but he didn’t like the way the car sat and idled.
A few minutes later, Link pushed his way into the lobby with their bags and a pile of dirty clothes. His daughter grabbed the duffel and quickly ushered him into a back room, where a teenage clerk sat on a swivel chair, looking like a steamy chat-room pervert. Lydia was flushed and fluttery, and the room smelled like cigarettes, grass, and gum.
He shut the door, sealing them in with the ripe air.
“Lydia, what the hell is this?”
Lydia plopped down on the floor and lit another cigarette, exhaling out of the corner of her mouth like an outlaw. She dripped ash into a soda can. “Did you get the stuff in the bathroom?”
“Yes, I got the stuff in the bathroom,” said Link.
“Good,” she said. “Because the cops are coming. Sooner or later. They may be here now.” She handed him two faxes from the table above her, showing their pictures and descriptions, suspected whereabouts, instructions for contacting the police.
Link rolled up the two papers and pointed them at the clerk. “And so this little cocksucker called the cops?”
“No, Dad! God! He’s with us. He’s helping us. Jesus, you’re such an asshole.”
“It’s all right,” said the clerk. “I got thick skin.”
“Is that the way you act? You call somebody a cocksucker when they try to help you?”
To avoid her righteous face, Link unrolled the papers and read them again.
The clerk said, “I just came on at ten. Those were already there, and I think, knowing the day guy—”
“It’s always the day guy,” said Lydia. “The day guy always fucks the night guy.”
They all sat cramped into the tiny room, as if trapped in a cargo elevator, and deliberated about their best options. Link barely spoke. He felt mired in some meandering teenage jam session, in which everything was a stoned philosophy to be explored, and the more everyone analyzed the situation, the less chance there was of doing anything. They had the nonchalance of kids arguing about whether to go to the beach or the movies. When he suggested they get the hell out of the motel, both Lydia and the clerk hissed at him, explaining that there was already a stakeout. They seemed too media-savvy for their own good. They were predicting police behavior based on what seemed to Link a giant montage of bad TV shows, and they were trying to impress each other with their obscure knowledge. The clerk knew that police needed a search warrant for a motel room, and that it sometimes took hours, but that they would keep watch on the room while the papers were processed. Lydia told him that this factual tidbit was “crucial,” and then asked Link if he agreed.
“Let’s go already,” said Link. “I’m leaving.”
“They have the license of the car, Dad. How far are we going to get in that piece of shit, anyway?”
“You’d have to steal a car,” said the clerk. “Can he hot-wire cars?”
“Dad? Can you hot-wire a car?”
“Do we have to take this creep with us?”
“He’s just helping us. Relax. Besides, I’m sure there’s already a stakeout.”
Looking between his blushing daughter and this lurching geek, Link realized what it was that so terrified him about the girl’s flirtatiousness. Every man has a woman in his mind who represents the best-looking honey he could possibly get. Lydia was genuinely pretty, but oily and quirky enough, weird and unwashed enough, to be that girl for practically every toothless wino or hard-up sex fiend along the road. She was a beauty with bad skin. A knockout in dirty laundry. Every loser’s lucky day.
It was just past one in the morning when they heard a car in the parking lot, footsteps along the sidewalk, and the bell triggered by the front door. The kids were right: It was two cops.
The clerk welcomed them to the Paradise Motel, then had a conversation with them at the desk while Link and Lydia sat quietly on the floor. She lit a cigarette for Link by placing the tip of it against hers. He was bothered by her expression: She was more proud of herself for being right than she was concerned about their safety. When she began to whisper, he put his hand over her mouth. When he removed it, she moved up close to his ear and told him that he smelled like gasoline.
There were two cops, with similar monotone voices. They’d received an anonymous call a few minutes ago, from the gas station across the street: Link glanced immediately at his daughter, and she looked back with quizzical eyes. Link could only figure that the call had something to do with the white car outside: an undercover cop, a private investigator hired by Ursula, an off-duty parole officer—God only knew. Maybe it was one of the lunatics who worked for Lydia’s dead boyfriend, wanting to flush them out of the motel any way they could, and using the cops to do it.
The clerk gave them the room number and told them that he hadn’t seen any activity. Only four rooms were occupied, and everyone had been asleep since his shift began. No new check-ins. He gave them a map, and with the usual rehearsed tone of speaking to customers, he described the location of the room. The cops asked about the back exit through the courtyard, around the pool and the vending machines. He told them the back gate was always locked; there was no way out through the courtyard.
The bell rang on the front door, and the cops passed the window again. Outside there was only the sound of an engine, a police radio, and a slamming door. The clerk crept back into the room. He held a key in the air, but first Link only noticed how badly his hand was shaking.
“This is the master key. I just gave one to them, and I’m giving you the other. You’re surrounded, so I don’t think you can just run. And I’m basically shitting in my pants right now. Take the key. Every room is empty except three, ten, and fifteen. They won’t see you if you take the inside stairs. You’ll come out on the second floor—along the catwalk. Just find a room and hide. Okay? I never saw you; you never saw me.”
Lydia rose and took the key. She said, “You’re the nicest person I never met.”
Trundling their bags, they moved
along the desk, up the back stairs, along the walkway over the pool, where the moon was now wavering in the deep end. They slipped into an upstairs room, and while Lydia eased shut the door, Link paced to the window to survey the parking lot. The white car had left the gas station, but now there was a squad car idling at the entrance to the motel, with two other unmarked cars sitting alongside it.
He whispered, “Shit,” then stepped back as a flashlight moved across the ground.
“Better stay away from the window,” said Lydia.
Link sat down on the edge of the bed, and she plopped onto the carpet beneath him. For a long time they were as still and quiet as fishermen, until Link exhaled and lowered himself onto the floor across from her. Lydia’s back was pressed against the eggshell-colored wall, and Link’s touched the bed frame as they faced each other in the dark. Lydia offered him a butterscotch candy. For a long time the candies rattled against their teeth.
“Dad?” she whispered in the dark. “What’s county jail like?”
“Different for men and women. I sort of liked it in my day. You can fight, play cards. Prison sucks, but county is sort of like summer camp.”
“Do they protect people? I mean, like, if somebody is after me—would they make sure I was okay?”
“There’s protective custody, but . . . Lydia, you got to talk to me about this.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “They won’t search all the rooms.”
They heard the raid on their former room: knocks, warnings, the door opening with the master key, followed by a stampede of boots. The voices grew softer, the footsteps slowed and stopped.
“That’s probably it,” said Lydia. “Right?”